The Rev. Canon Susan Russell, who blogs at An Inch at a Time, wound up changing her plans for the weekend when she was invited to attend Monday’s White House signing ceremony for President Obama’s executive order prohibiting LGBT employment discrimination for government contractors. Russell was one of many religious leaders present at the ceremony.
Obama’s executive order simply amends the existing policy prohibiting contractors from employment discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, color or national origin to also prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. As Jonathan Capehart summarizes:
President Johnson was the first to use an executive order to protect federal contractors. In 1965, he signed Executive Order 11246 that banned discrimination based on race, creed, color or national origin. He amended it in 1967 to include protection based on sex. Then, [President George W.] Bush added a religious exemption to the Johnson order in 2002 that allows religiously affiliated contractors to use religion as a factor in hiring.
The religious exemption carved out by Bush — and left intact by Obama — applies only to faith-based agencies. What it means is that if, for example, the Mennonite Central Committee were contracted to assist with disaster relief, they would not be regarded as violating the prohibition against employment discrimination on the basis of creed due to their preference for hiring Mennonites (rather than Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Pagans, atheists or Episcopalians). But the MCC would still be prohibited from employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color or national origin.
Bush’s exemption is, in other words, more like Hosanna Tabor than like Hobby Lobby. It says that religious organizations may preserve their religious identity through religious preference in hiring, not that religious claims can provide a blanket exemption from laws applicable to everyone else.
President Obama’s executive order did not add any new religious exemption for religious groups who might claim that their religious convictions compel them to discriminate on the basis of race. That would have been unfair, disastrously undermining equal protection under the law when it comes to race.
President Obama’s executive order did not add any new religious exemption for religious groups who might claim that their religious convictions compel them to discriminate on the basis of sex. That would have been unfair, disastrously undermining equal protection under the law when it comes to sex.
President Obama’s executive order did not add any new religious exemption for religious groups who might claim that their religious convictions compel them to discriminate on the basis of color. That would have been unfair, disastrously undermining equal protection under the law when it comes to color.
President Obama’s executive order did not add any new religious exemption for religious groups who might claim that their religious convictions compel them to discriminate on the basis of national origin. That would have been unfair, disastrously undermining equal protection under the law when it comes to national origin.
And yet, it seems that some were hoping or expecting that President Obama’s executive order would add a new religious exemption for religious groups who claim that their religious convictions compel them to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Obama did not do that. That would have been unfair, disastrously undermining equal protection under the law when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity.
But apparently a handful of religious leaders were worried that Obama’s extension of protection against discrimination was — what did Dr. King’s correspondents call it? — unwise and untimely. A small group of these folks, spearheaded by Jim Wallis, fretted that Obama’s action was not “well-timed” and drafted a letter urging a more cautious, piecemeal approach, accommodating a more gradual pace of change by carving out the kind of “religious exemption” that was never permitted when it comes to race, sex, creed, color or national origin:
“We believe that change in our churches is necessary in regard to welcoming LGBT persons and are committed to working on that,” stated the draft of the letter obtained by BuzzFeed. “But we believe that government action in making those changes would be very counter-productive to our goals of change.”
Happily, even the organizers of this letter eventually realized that last sentence didn’t make much sense (logically, legally, morally or grammatically) and this letter was never sent.
That such a letter was drafted and almost sent, though, is being portrayed as evidence of some new split between “gay-rights and faith groups on the left.” That’s how Molly Ball described it for The Atlantic, but Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches can’t find any evidence to support the existence of such a rift. Sure, there’s the same split there’s always been between gay-rights and some faith groups on the right, but Ball’s claim of disgruntled religious progressives, as Posner says, “has slim, if any evidence to support it. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence against it.”
Posner notes that Ball’s description relies heavily on the response to Obama’s executive order by a group called Third Way. That name might just be a clue that this group isn’t really representative of “the left”:
Ball’s first piece of evidence is a quote from the centrist think tank Third Way, long a player in efforts to find “common ground” on hot button culture war issues, an effort that in the area of LGBT rights, at least, has been rapidly sidelined. Mystifyingly, Ball — who I must add here is a reporter I have long admired — describes Third Way’s “research and activism on gay marriage” as “instrumental to that cause’s mainstream acceptance.” (If anyone can point me to evidence that description is true, I’m all ears.)
The name of that Very Serious think tank reminds me of Alan Bean’s recent sardonic observation that the church always seems to seek — and find — a “third way” when it comes to matters of justice:
Logically, the churches of the segregated South had to decide whether to accept or reject the civil rights movement. Instead, denominational officials crafted tepid resolutions affirming Brown v. Board of Education or the Voting Rights Act and calling for racial harmony. Contrary-minded congregations (and they were legion) were not drummed out of the denomination for refusing to open their churches to African American Christians. SBC pastors weren’t forced to sign off on racial equality to remain in good standing.
Instead, the SBC, with other evangelical denominations in the South, adopted a Third Way approach in which the subject of race was avoided whenever possible, ostensibly in the interest of keeping the focus where it belonged – on saving souls.
… When moral issues are hotly contested there will always be three ways (at the very least): traditional, progressive and uncomfortable.
It was to that Third-Way third group — the uncomfortable — that Dr. King wrote in the epistle referenced above, “I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”
Susan Russell also offers an invitation to the uncomfortable. Sarah Posner caught up with her at that White House signing ceremony and asked about her response to the trepidation expressed in Jim Wallis’ uncomfortable letter asking for a brand new religious exemption to permit discrimination.
“I think it’s delightful that Jim Wallis has decided to come along,” Russell said, “and he’s welcome along the 21st century train towards making liberty and justice for all actually mean all.”
That’s either a gracious and magnanimous invitation or else she’s really twisting the blade. Maybe both. Both may be appropriate.
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